DECLARATION is the output of man from his self-inflicted immaturity. Infancy is the inability to use one’s mind without the direction of another. Self-inflicted is this immaturity, if the cause of it is not lack of reason, but resolution and courage to make use of it without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of the people, having long since acquitted nature of foreign leadership [A482] (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless like to remain underage for life; and why it becomes so easy for others to pose to their guardians. It is so comfortable to be underage. If I have a book that has my wits about me, a pastor who has conscience for me, a doctor who judges my diet, and so on, I do not need to make any effort myself. I do not need to think, if only I can pay; others will take over the morose business for me. The fact that by far the greatest part of men (among them the whole fairer sex) holds the step to maturity apart from the fact that he is cumbersome, is already ensured by those guardians who have kindly undertaken the supervision of them. After making their livestock stupid at first, and carefully guarding that these quiet creatures were not allowed to venture a step beyond the buggy in which they imprisoned them, afterwards they show them the danger that threatens them when they try to do so alone go. Now, this danger is not so great, for they would learn to walk through a few traps at last; but an example of that kind makes you timid and generally discourages all further attempts.

It is therefore difficult for every single person to work his way out of the immaturity that has almost become natural to him. He even loved her and for the time being is really unable to use his own mind because they never let him try it. Constitutions and formulas, these mechanical tools of rational use or rather misuse of his natural gifts, are the footsteps of perpetual immaturity. Whoever throws them off would nevertheless make an unsafe jump over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. Therefore, there are only a few who have managed to work their way out of immaturity by doing their own work and still doing a safe walk …

But that an audience can enlighten itself is rather possible; yes, it is almost inevitable, if you leave him only freedom. For there will always find some self-thinkers, even among the appointed guardians of the great heap, who, having cast off the yoke of immaturity themselves, the spirit of a rational estimation of each man’s own worth and profession, even to think about himself be spread. It is especially true that the public, which had previously been brought under this yoke by them, afterwards compelled them to remain under it, when it was incited to it by some of his guardians, who are themselves incapable of all enlightenment [A484]; it is so damaging to plant prejudices because they last avenge themselves on those who or their predecessors were their authors. Therefore, an audience can only slowly reach the Enlightenment. A revolution may well bring about a decline of personal despotism and profit-seeking or domineering oppression, but never true reform of the mindset; but new prejudices, as well as the old ones, will serve as the guiding line of the thoughtless large crowd.

For this enlightenment nothing is required but freedom; and indeed the most harmless of all that may be called only freedom, namely, to make public use of its reason in all its parts. But now I hear from all sides call: Räsonniert not! The officer says: Do not argue, but practice! The Finance Council: Reasoned not, but paid! The clergyman: Do not argue, but believe! (Only one lord in the world says: Reasoned, whatever you want and what you want, but obey!) Here is restriction of freedom everywhere. But what restriction hinders the Enlightenment, which does not, but rather promotes it? I answer: The public use of his reason must be free at all times, and alone can bring enlightenment among men [A485]; their private use, however, may often be very narrow, without, however, hindering the progress of the Enlightenment. Under the public use of his own reason, however, I understand the one whom a scholar makes of her before the whole public of the reader world.

I call private use the one he is allowed to do of his reason in a certain bourgeois position or office entrusted to him. Now, to some transactions which are in the interest of the common essence, a certain mechanism is necessary, by means of which some members of the common being must merely behave passively, directed by an unanimous arbitration by the government for public ends, or at least destruction to be held for these purposes. Of course, here it is not allowed to reason; but one must obey. However, insofar as this part of the machine at the same time regards itself as a member of a whole meanness, and even of world civilization, and thus in the quality of a scholar turning to a public in the true sense of the word, he can, however, reason without doing business to which he is partially attached as a passive member.

Thus it would be very pernicious if an officer commanded by his superiors wanted to aloud in the service of [A486] the usefulness or usefulness of this order; He must obey. However, he can not reasonably be denied the opportunity to make remarks as a scholar about the mistakes in the war service and present it to his audience for evaluation. The citizen can not refuse to pay the taxes imposed upon him; even a cheeky censure of such covenants, if they are to be made by him, can be punished as a scandal (which might cause general antagonisms). The same is true regardless of the duty of a citizen, when he publicly expresses his thoughts as a scholar against the impropriety or even unfairness of such invitations to tender.

He will say: our church teaches this or that; these are the reasons why she uses them. He then draws all the practical benefits for his community from statutes which he himself would not sign with complete conviction, to whose lecture he can nevertheless make a claim, because it is not altogether impossible that truth would be hidden therein, but in any case at least nothing of the internal religion contradictory is found in it. For if he thought he would find the latter in it, he would not be able to administer his office with conscience; he would have to put it down. The use that an employed teacher makes of his reason before his congregation is merely a private use, because it is always only a domestic, however great congregation; and in view of this, he is not free as a priest, nor is he allowed to be, because he is arranging a foreign assignment. On the other hand, as a scholar who speaks to the actual public, that is, to the world, and consequently to the clergyman in the public use of his reason, enjoys an unrestricted freedom to use his own reason and to speak in his own person. For the guardians of the people [A488] (in spiritual matters) should themselves be minors, is an absurdity that amounts to perpetuation of the absurdities.

But should not a society of clerics, such as a church assembly or a venerable Classis (as it calls itself among the Dutch), be entitled to pledge to commit themselves to a certain immutable symbol, to procure a perpetual tutelage over each of their members and mediators to lead them over the people and to perpetuate them? I say: that is impossible. Such a contract, which would always prevent any further explanation of the human race, is absolutely null and void; and he should also be confirmed by the supreme power, by the Diet and the most solemn peace treaties.

An age can not unite and conspire to put the following in a state in which it must be impossible for him to broaden his (mainly so very appropriate) insights, to purify from errors and even to progress in the Enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature whose original purpose consists precisely in this progression; and the descendants are therefore perfectly entitled to reject those decisions, taken as unauthorized and outrageous. The test-stone [A489] of everything that can be decided upon as a law by a people lies in the question: whether a people could well impose such a law on themselves? Now, as it were in the expectation of a better life, this would probably be possible for a certain short time, in order to introduce a certain order: by making it at the same time freely available to every citizen, principally the cleric, in the quality of a scholar. i. to make his observations through writings about the faultiness of the dermal device, while the established order continued to persist, until the insight into the nature of these things had come and been publicly brought to the fore by uniting their voices (though not all) Proposal before the throne could bring to protect those communities that would have agreed about their terms of better insight to a changed religion institution, but without hindering those who want to keep the old. But agreeing on a persistent religious constitution, which nobody publicly disputes, even within the lifespan of a human being, and thereby destroying as it were a period in the progress of humanity for improvement, is fruitless, but even disadvantageous to offspring illicit. It is true that a person can postpone the explanation of his person [A490] and then only for a time in what he is supposed to know; but to renounce them, be it for his own person, but more for offspring, means to violate and trample the sacred rights of humanity. But what a people may not decide upon itself, even less a monarch may decide on the people; for his legislative authority is based on the fact that he unites the entire popular will in his own.

If he only sees to it that all true or imagined improvement is consistent with the bourgeois order, then he can, by the way, only let his subjects do what they need to do for the sake of their salvation; it is none of his business, but it is to prevent that one does not violently prevent another from working on his destiny and promotion after all. He himself breaks off from his Majesty by interfering in this by honoring the writings by which his subjects seek to purify their insights from his governmental oversight, both when he does so out of his own highest intelligence, where he submits to reproaches: Caesar non est supra grammaticos, as well as and much more, if he humbles his supreme power so far as to support the spiritual despotism of some tyrants [A491] in his state against his other subjects.

When asked, are we living in an enlightened age? So the answer is no, but probably in an age of enlightenment. That men, as things stand now, on the whole, are already capable of, or even able to be set in, to use their own intellect in religious matters without the guidance of another, is still very much lacking. But the fact that now the field is opened to them, to work freely there, and the obstacles of the general enlightenment or the outcome of their self-inflicted immaturity gradually diminish, we have clear indications. In this view, this age is the Age of Enlightenment.

A prince who does not find it unworthy to say that he considers it his duty not to impose anything on people in religious matters, but to give them full freedom in that, even rejects the haughty name of tolerance, is himself enlightened and deserves to be praised by the grateful world and posterity as the one who first rejected the human race of immaturity, at least on the part of the government, and left it to each man to serve his own reason in all matters of conscience. Below him, venerable clerics, without prejudice to their official duties, may freely and publicly disclose to the world, for their consideration, their judgments and insights in the quality of the scholars, deviating from the accepted symbol here and there; but even more so anyone else who is not restricted by any official duty. This spirit of freedom is also spreading outside, even where it has to contend with the external obstacles of a self-misunderstanding government. For it is clear to this one example that in the case of freedom there is not the least thing to do for the public peace and unity of the common being. People are gradually working their way out of the raw, if you just do not artificially work them to keep them in there.

I have the main point of the Enlightenment, d. i. the outcome of the people out of their self-inflicted immaturity, set exquisite in matters of religion, because in consideration of the arts and sciences our rulers have no interest in playing the guardian over their subjects, as well as that immaturity, as well as the most harmful, and therefore the most dishonorable everyone is. But the mindset of a head of state favoring the former goes even further, and sees that even in the light of his legislation [A493] there is no danger of allowing his subjects to make public use of their own reason and their thoughts of a better one Drafting them, even with an outspoken criticism of those already given, to present publicly to the world; of which we have a glorious example, whereby no monarch yet went before the one whom we worship.

But even he who, even enlightened, is not afraid of shadows, but at the same time has at his disposal a well-disciplined army to ensure public peace, can say what a free state must not dare: Reasoned, as much as you like, and what you want about; just obey! Thus a strange, unexpected course of human things is revealed here; as well as otherwise, if one looks at it on a large scale, it is almost all paradoxical. A greater degree of bourgeois freedom seems advantageous to the freedom of the people’s spirit, and yet sets limitless barriers to it; a degree less of that, on the other hand, gives this room the capacity to expand after all. If nature, under this hard shell, has developed the germ for which she cares most tenderly, namely the inclination and occupation for free thinking, then this gradually works back into the senses of the people (through which this freedom of action is acted) ] and finally even the principles of the government, which it finds itself conducive to treating the human being, who is now more than a machine, according to his dignity.

Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

Every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in a universal kingdom of ends.Kant’s categorical imperative and the trial of Adolf Eichmann: In 1961, discussion of Kant’s categorical imperative included even the trial of the infamous SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.

As Hannah Arendt wrote in her book on the trial, Eichmann declared “with great emphasis that he had lived his whole life … according to a Kantian definition of duty”. Arendt considered this so “incomprehensible on the face of it” that it confirmed her sense that he wasn’t really thinking at all, just mouthing accepted formulae, thereby establishing his banality.

Judge Raveh indeed had asked Eichmann whether he thought he had really lived according to the categorical imperative during the war. Eichmann acknowledged he did not “live entirely according to it, although I would like to do so.”

Deborah Lipstadt, in her book on the trial, takes this as evidence that evil is not banal, but is in fact self-aware.